


She With Sable Wine

by CourierNinetyTwo



Series: Victorian Horror AU [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Victorian Horror AU, vampire!Widowmaker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 06:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15431487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNinetyTwo/pseuds/CourierNinetyTwo
Summary: Angela seeks a cure for Amélie's hunger, but the price could almost kill her.





	She With Sable Wine

**Author's Note:**

> Commissioned by fireandirons!

Some experiments went awry faster than others.

Angela's initial forays into fortifying her blood were simply put: failures. Whatever effects they infused into her veins came with too much bodily weakness of be of any use, and she went back to the drawing board, over and over again. There was a solution sleeping somewhere, waiting to be plucked free and polished to brilliance; she knew it, she had to believe it.

Because otherwise Amélie would never be at peace again.

The vampire slumbered now, in the hour when the sun dripped back below the horizon in splashes of color. She would awaken soon, then hunt through Paris' streets before finding a suitable victim; 'suitable' meaning a far enough distance away from her last one, as not to draw further attention. There was already a hunter named Morrison patrolling through the city, and with every corpse toppled into the Seine, the risk of evidence washing up grew by the day.

Angela shook her head, ill at ease. Amélie had fed on her for so long without protest, but late last winter, the other woman had taken too much blood, and Angela passed out in her arms. It was a momentary inconvenience, but Amélie had drawn a line between them the next night they met; she would move her coffin to Angela's sprawling basement, but refused to sate her thirst on the doctor any longer.

She had agreed, if only to keep Amélie from fleeing into the night, never to be seen again. There was a selfish aspect to it too; Angela learned a startling amount about the undead simply from observing Amélie in her sleep, and continued to compile her notes on a potential cure.

A cure wasn't why she had just plunged another syringe into her arm, though. Amélie's life had become a dehumanizing loop since that night, for the vampire had to spend so many hours on the hunt that she crawled back into her coffin minutes before sunrise, only to wake the next night and repeat the cycle again. Angela knew it might not be appropriate to consider Amélie a patient, considering their brushes with physical intimacy, but compassion seized her heart at the sight of such suffering.

Compassion and...well, that word served its purpose; Angela felt no need to interrogate any others that might have followed.

As the needle slipped from her skin, she sighed. There seemed to be no effect at all this time, and Angela reached for a pen to scribble a few detailed, disappointed observations in her journal before falling asleep in her chair.

She woke an hour later, utterly rejuvenated. Angela was used to stealing fragments of sleep here and there, having to monitor her work on a level that derided any mortal schedule. Exhaustion informed every minute of her day, but right now, she felt like she could run the length of the river coiled around her laboratory. Fingers trembling with excitement, she snagged her pen again and made a messy chain of notes across a new page. The energy was a pleasant side effect, but Angela would shelve this formula too if it didn't pass the most important test.

Scouring the drawers in her desk, she fetched a razor-sharp lancet to pierce the tip of one finger. Blood bubbled to the surface in slow, languorous drops, and Angela was distracted by the process for a few heartbeats before sucking her finger clean. Not a sterile solution by any means, but the cleanly healed skin underneath proved there was no need to worry about infection; it was if the cut had never existed to begin with.

"Oh, Amélie." Angela smiled, then looked at the heavy brass clock hanging on her wall; the vampire would rise in minutes. "You'll drink well tonight, my dear."

She brought the lancet with her down into the basement, as well as a pack of matches to light the paraffin lamps along the way. The ruins of her oldest work littered the shelves; prototypes for that young American's prosthetic arm, a yellowed stack of notes from an eventually fruitless exchange with one of Ireland's premier scientists, and a death mask of Gabriel's face, cast in wax. He still lived, of course--in a sense--but Angela had never been able to get rid of the hollow cast; the soldier was a friend, once.

Amélie's coffin was in the very center, resting on a foundation of cold stone. Dark earth was packed around the very bottom, anchoring the vampire home, but the heavy wooden lid had already been flung open. Her awakening was sluggish in recent nights, and although Angela noted a faint stirring of movement, Amélie's eyes were not open yet.

Extinguishing the last match with a soft breath, Angela brought the lancet to her wrist this time. This severing stung, pain setting her teeth on edge, but the blood flowed far more freely, and with her arm held out as offering, she approached the coffin. Amélie was a pale, narrow column amidst a pit of ebony, wearing a silken robe almost indistinguishable from the marble of her skin; death itself, in beautiful, haunting repose.

Tilting her hand, Angela shivered as a hot line of blood dripped down to the inside of her elbow, but Amélie suddenly jerked awake. It wasn't a human movement, no, more like a puppet's strings tugged taut by an unforgiving mistress. A feral, starved countenance possessed the vampire's face as she lunged for the source of her relief, pulling Angela halfway into the coffin with her. The doctor gasped, bracing herself for the bite when a glimmer of human recognition entered golden eyes; Amélie froze in place, her fangs a scarce inch from Angela's skin.

" _Angela_." Oh, the vampire had never whispered her name like that before, with such tortured longing. "I told you, I will not...I will not feed from you again. Why would you--"

"It won't hurt me this time," Angela insisted, keeping her arm perfectly still. Her heartbeat urged blood to flow, but Amélie's grip was iron tight. "I've made sure of it."

Amélie's bright gaze narrowed to thin, serpentine slits. "What have you been toying with, to be so sure of that, doctor?"

Tempted as she was to explain the process, Angela had a feeling that Amélie wouldn't approve of the ingredients used, much less how much risk she had put herself through to perfect what made her blood sing now. "It doesn't matter. You don't need to hunt anymore, when you have me."

She watched resistance play out across Amélie's face in countless agonizing steps, guilt being foremost among them. Then the other woman leaned forward that last inch, her tongue darting out to drink from the crimson pool in the crook of Angela's elbow.

There were many things Angela had learned to expect when Amélie fed on her; a malleable, ecstatic sort of pain, cool flesh, and a distant embrace. A low moan of pleasure from the vampire's lips was not on that list.

"The way you taste now, you--" Amélie looked up at Angela, tormented as a saint full of arrows. "No, you shouldn't have..."

In some sense, she felt Amélie move, brutal strength unfurling in slender limbs before they were both on the floor. Angela's head struck ice-cold stone, but her body was flush with warmth as Amélie's fangs plunged deep into her throat. The vampire swallowed in heavy gulps, faster that she could truly drink, even with a pricked artery spilling life onto her tongue. Angela was dazed, her vision blurring at the edges, but she could make out shattered syllables of French, and something lukewarm dripped down the front of her dress. Not _her_ blood.

Shaking fingers found Amélie's cheek even as the vampire continued to drain her dry, frenzied by compulsion. The cooler trail was red-tinged tears, and the other woman's strangled words were a prayer, asking for forgiveness. Angela would have laughed, were her lungs not holding onto the last threads of air; she had turned her body into a fountain of nectar, a feast of ambrosia, then offered it to someone too desperate to refuse. Wagering that Amélie's humanity would override her monstrosity was arrogance. No--it was hubris.

At least the pain faded fast. Angela felt like she was floating when Amélie's fangs finally pulled free, halfway to a heaven she didn't deserve. The vampire's face was the last shape she could make sense of, bloodied mouth trapped in a grieving chant of French, " _non, non, Angela, je t'en supplie, je ne voulais pas te blesser..."_

She collapsed against the floor, cold and leaden.

\--

Angela awoke in a shroud of white.

It took her a few minutes to recognize the gauzy curtains around her bed with sun piercing through the nearby window, making her eyes ache. Her throat ached too, but when she gingerly touched the skin there, it was perfectly smooth. She looked down at her clothes, parsing the rust-dark stains encrusted all the way down her décolletage; a river of dried blood, but one that had finally ceased to flow.

"She'll never forgive me for passing out twice," Angela whispered under her breath, then stifled a scream of shock when something moved in the corner of her vision.

Amélie was sitting in a chair in the very corner of her bedroom, secreted in a thin veil of shadow. She was _awake_ , even if the look on the vampire's face was one of distant horror. "Angela."

"What are you doing out of your coffin at this hour?" The doctor demanded, concern for the other woman overriding the host of aches and pains plaguing her body. "If the sun touches you, you'll--"

"I could not leave you," Amélie interrupted with a hiss, "I thought I killed you. I was so sure. So I brought you up here, and when the sun rose, I was going to..."

Golden eyes fell to the floor, haunted and empty. Angela fit the rest of the silent promise together, and drew in a steadying breath. "But you didn't."

"Your heart started to beat again," Amélie whispered. "I have no idea how."

Angela had any number of theories, ones she would be sure to test at length later, but for the moment, she was more concerned about easing the vampire back from that desperate edge. "I'm fine, Amélie. You didn't hurt me."

"Of course I did!" The words snapped out, baring the other woman's fangs. "I wanted all of you. You tasted _perfect_. I couldn't stop."

"You did stop," Angela chided gently, "I'm right here."

"Only because I gorged myself to my limit," Amélie muttered.

"After how many weeks of refusing to drink your fill?" If the vampire wanted her to be afraid, it would never work; Angela had long since accepted death as a price of her calling. "Now go back downstairs and sleep, Amélie. I'm not angry with you, and I'll heal soon enough."

The only answer she received for a long while was silence. Then Amélie gestured towards the doorway to the bedroom, looking a touch afraid herself. "I cannot."

Angela followed the path of the other woman's fingers, and saw the wide stretch of sunlight splashed across the door. There wasn't even an inch of darkness to hide in, and no other way to leave the room.

"Oh, Amélie, I'm sorry." She smiled weakly. "I wasn't trying to put you in danger."

"I'll just sit here until the sun falls, doctor." Amélie shrugged. "I've had worse days."

That wouldn't do. Angela sat up on her knees, drawing the second layer of curtains around her bed until the light from the far window was completely obscured. In a dark cradle of safety, she pulled the blankets aside, offering the empty half of the bed in invitation.

"Come lay with me," Angela said, uttered as a soft plea rather than a command. "You'll be covered, at least."

For a moment, Amélie looked like she was going to refuse. Stubbornness set the line of her jaw into a blade, but by subtle inches, the vampire unfolded herself from the chair and climbed onto the bed. Angela draped the blankets over her, then slipped beneath the heavy layers of fabric too, cocooned in the dark. She couldn't really see Amélie, but Angela knew that Amélie could see her.

She shifted closer, breaking the distance between their bodies until her head bumped right underneath Amélie's chin. A cool, cautious arm draped around Angela's back, and she relaxed into the touch, content in the crook of the other woman's shoulder. Something tapped below her ear, slow and weighty like the fall of an executioner's axe.

"Is your heart beating?" Angela asked, unable to drive the wonder from her voice.

"Yes," Amélie sighed in answer. "The noise is irritating after such a long time without it."

Hidden as she was, Angela had to smile.

It was no irritation to her; it was a miracle.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> Blood follow'd, but immortal; ichor pure,  
> Such as the blessed inhabitants of heaven  
> May bleed, nectareous; for the Gods eat not  
> Man's food, nor slake as he with sable wine  
> Their thirst, thence bloodless and from death exempt.  
> \--The Iliad, v. 339–342


End file.
